Hello everyone!

So I've GM'd a few of my first games where the setting is in Cyberpunk 2077 and I created a google doc for my players where I copy/pasted all of the relevant rules that I intend to use for this campaign. However, I'm getting the strong feeling that a couple of my players are still VERY overwhelmed by the GURPS system as a whole, and I think that might be my fault. Nobody in the group has used GURPS before, and I'm the only one who has read the books, so when we did character creation, I had each player tell me what they wanted their character to feel like, and then I did the cherry-picking in GCS to assemble their sheets. 2 of the characters ended up having just a giant wall of text to cover what their abilities are. To me, reading each one individually sounds very clear, but to the players, I think it was too overloading and they got checked-out. At the start of playing, I did tell my players that since we're all new to the system, we can do a free character reset after a few games like what happens when you leave the tutorial of a Bethesda game, since maybe some advantages they picked aren't exactly what they wanted after all.

This brings me to the main point of my post; are there any good resources out there for character lenses, archetypes, and/or templates (which I'll just collectively refer to as "lenses") that can break down the character creation process for new players into a clear, step-by-step process? I know that the Dungeon Fantasy series has lenses for fantasy classes and heritages, but are there resources that have lenses for settings outside of medieval D&D-style campaigns? Possibly a website or forum where people can submit their own lenses.

Alternatively for the veteran GURPS GMs out there, do you have any advice for people who want to design their own lenses? Like common pitfalls to avoid, or how to appropriately segment how many points should go into different categories of upgrades.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback!

How do you run solo campaigns? I've seen some videos, notably the youtube series of dungeon crawling, but I have some questions, and besides I'd like to hear more ideas.

How do you prepare a world? How to split between player time and the GM time? How to make things unpredictable? What are some good practices to keep when starting out? How much time, and how often do you play?

GURPS 3E had an amazing number of supplements on the most bizarre subjects, and I wonder what your favorite among them is.

My own nomination is for GURPS Y2K, which was published (of course) in 1999. It was basically a collection of essays on how to end the world (or at least human civilization) in style, and furthermore served as an introduction to survivalist/prepper communities.

While GURPS is still one of my favorite RPG systems, I have to admit that I haven't paid much attention to it in the last few years - my local gaming group is absolutely uninterested in using this system, and my new side business of translating German folk tales has left me with far less time for recreational RPG reading.

But I am curious - what new and exciting stuff has come out for the system in the last few years?

So I've been using the GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) app to help my friends make characters for my Cyberpunk game, and I noticed something weird. One of the characters has the "Bionic Arms" body modification (Ultra-Tech p209), which includes the "No Fine Manipulators" disadvantage with the "Mitigator: Monthly treatment of Maintenance" modifier for -70% cost. What we didn't notice was that "No Fine Manipulators" (Basic Set: Characters p145) has a note at the bottom which reduces the cost of upgrading ST and DX by 40%. GCS automatically applied this discount to ST and DX point costs, and now we're unsure if that should be the case.

Is this a small oversight with GCS and the upgrade costs should be the normal 10 for ST, 20 for DX since the effect should be mitigated, or is GCS correct? We're just trying to figure this out because if it is a mistake, my friend's character is overspent by about 40 points.

Hello again! I'm back from looking through several books and trying to cobble together some stuff to run my friends through a short GURPS Cyberpunk campaign, and I have one big question; Am I doing this right? Basically, I started making some cyberware stuff for my players that's directly taken from CP2077 and I don't know if the combination of enhancements is too expensive, not expensive enough, or if I'm over-complicating the process.

The first one is a Sandevistan Mk 1 (Costs 70pt + $500):

• Free action to use at the end of your turn to immediately take another turn
• Altered Time Rate 1 (base 100pt cost)
• 2 FP cost per use (-10% per FP = -20pt)
• 5 second recharge between uses (-10% = -10pt)
• Costs $500 (I remember finding a book source on this cost but now can't find it)

The second one is the Gorilla Arms (Costs 18pt + $2,000)

• $1,000 cost for Cyber Arm upgrade ($500 per arm)
• $1,000 cost for upgrading Cyber Arms to Gorilla Arms (Includes Arm ST and Hand DR below)
• 2 Arm ST (5pt per rank = 10pt)
• 2 Damage Resistance (5pt per rank, then -20% for Partial: Hand = 8pt)

Quickhack: Reboot Optics (Costs 39pt + $500)

• Obscure Vision 8 (2pt per rank = 16pt)
• Stealthy (+100% = 16pt)
• Ranged (+50% = 8pt)
• 5 second recharge between uses (-10% = 1pt)
• Costs $500

Are these point and money cost values too high, too low, or sound about right? Is there anything I'm missing from these lists? For the Gorilla Arms, I'm not sure if there should be a Natural Attack paired with it or if the 2 Arm ST is good enough to improve the regular Punch natural attack. Also, for the Reboot Optics quickhack, I was looking to see if there were limitations I could use to reduce the point cost by limiting the range and number of targets affected, but didn't see anything. The default rules for Obscure [Sense] in Basic Set: Characters says that making it ranged gives it a max range of 100 units, and the affected area is a 2 unit radius, while I'd want to reduce it down to 50 unit range, single-target, and only affect robots and cybernetics. Would these be custom limitations I'd have to make?

Again, ty to everyone for the help!

Let's start with some background - I have a few GURPS books, but I've never actually played any GURPS. And a while back, I bought the Martial Arts book. To my great surprise, that book even had rules for the (in the Western world) obscure martial art called Shorinji Kempo, which I practice myself in real life. And what's even more surprising was the fact that book's description of it was 99% accurate.

This seeded the idea that I could try to create a version of myself in GURPS, but where I try to stay true to reality. In other words, the character would be a software developer with the skills to match, and a Shorinji Kempo black belt.

Well, then the next logical step would be to solo play with that character (I'm an active solo RPG player, just not with GURPS yet). And since the PC is based on me, the game world could be based on the real world too. I'd live in the same town, have the same family and friends, etc. That way I wouldn't have to do much in the way of world building.

But then I could divert from reality and make up stories about conspiracies (or whatever) happening in my local area that I could come across and get drawn into. Perhaps there's a secret underground network of tunnels under the city center, connecting various buildings. Who built them, and why? And who's using them now? Why the secrecy?

I think this could be an interesting exercise. If I wanted to, I could do real life research about the history of my town for inspiration, even visiting locations to take photos, and so on.

Am I crazy for finding this idea interesting? Has anyone done anything similar?

Hello again helpful GURPS people!

I've been doing more reading and working to get the foundation of my first GURPS Cyberpunk campaign put together, and I ran into a bit of a conundrum. When players are putting together their characters, are there any rules about how implanted weapons differ from weapons used normally? Like if a player wanted to use a mono-wire whip that costs $5,000, would there be a different cost for having it implanted in their hand? Or if there's a chip they could get that allows them to use a power like the sandevistan, I don't know how to handle that since powers are point buy but it would also cost money...? I've tried looking in the books for any rules or recommendations, but if they exist then I think I've missed them.

Hello!

So I've never actually played GURPS, but I recently re-discovered some old Counter Monkey videos from Spoony that I watched back in the day. There were numerous times where he mentioned how good of a system it is, and got me particularly hyped to try out the Cyberpunk/Cthulhu-Punk modules with my friends. Since then I've checked out several books like the 4e Basic Set, Ultra-Tech, Horror, etc.

After looking through and getting the general idea of how combat works (I think), there's one thing that kind of seems worrying; players only getting 1 action per turn. Since my friends and I have mainly just played Pathfinder for the last decade, I'm concerned that they won't be interested in going from that system with 3-action turns to GURPS' 1-action system. With that in mind, I was curious if anyone else ran into that issue, and also if upping it to 2-actions per turn just ruins the game completely? But like having a bit of a limitation on it, such as making it move-and-do-X but not allowing double moves or double 'do-X' actions on the same turn

By 'logographic languages', i mean ones where words are represented through unique symbols, such as Chinese.

How much do you allow mages to pump up their missile spells when using the default GURPS magic-as-skills system? Particularly with casting level 15+ (enough to get a discount) and a few levels of Magery? The GURPS FAQ 4.3.3 here mentions that the total cost of the full charging time is discounted once - so at casting level 15 you can charge a 1 die fireball for 1 second for free, but you cannot cast a free 3 dice fireball by spending 3 seconds charging it - that would instead cost 2 energy points.

But what about the upper end? GURPS Basic Set page 240 says you can “invest one or more points of energy in the spell, to a maximum number of energy points equal to your Magery level”. Suppose a PC with Fireball-15 and Magery 2 spends 1 second creating a 2 dice fireball. This has cost them 1 energy point. Does this mean they could instead spent 1 second investing 2 energy points (their maximum Magery) into a 3 dice (discounted price) fireball? I saw this idea posted on the GURPS wiki here, but I haven’t found anything discussing this idea elsewhere.

Peter V. Dell'Orto has mentioned that even allowing the discount to apply to each charging turn hasn't wrecked his game, so I'm not worried about the balance component of 1-2 extra dice of damage; I'm just curious what other GMs would permit at their table.

I grabbed a copy of the 3rd ed Basic Set, but its a little intimidating haha.

Any recommendations for me to bring to a oneshot night to show why Gurps is neat?

For me at least, it's TL7. I just love that Space Race vibe.

Let's kick off some activity here with a question:

How much crunch do you, personally, like in your games?

Ultra Lite? Lite? Basic Set? Every book you can get your hands on?

Light on combat, heavy on skills? Vice-versa? Light overall with some aspects way more fleshed-out? Heavy overall with some aspects way more simplified? Are there specific mechanics you like to take full advantage of? Mechanics you like to gloss over?

No wrong answers, let's just get some discussion going